


Warm Thoughts

by moussemachine



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, John's Loaders, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moussemachine/pseuds/moussemachine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaige pays a visit to John, aka a defeated Handsome Jack who survived the final battle of BL2 and is now living incognito as an every day loader reseller out in The Dust. A little scene where two immature nerds talk engineering shop, make fun of and yell at each other, and get kind of embarrassed. Set in nakawhatever's great 'John's Loader's AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> a'right the whole 'john's loaders' au setting is courtesy of one nakawhatever i like it a lot and wanted to do a piece of writing inspired by it so here we are please to enjoy

“Hey! Heeyyyy Uggo! You iiiiin?!”  
John exhaled, slumping in relief. Every creak of the front door, every querying voice that broke the creaky silence of the front room, every damn time, he froze like a goddamn deer caught in headlights, hardly daring to breathe or even think for those several seconds where he waited to see if his future held a sale, an annoyance or painful death. Or all three, Pandora being what it was.  
He recognized this particular voice. It was the good sort of recognization. Well, mostly good. The third option was still always a small but distinct possibility with her; she just always got so excited about things. John understood that sort of excitement, not that he’d experienced it anytime recently.  
His personal loader was out back, stacking up scrap metal by alloy type; the shop was technically closed that day, but the damn kid always barged in no matter what. A few years ago he’d have been pissed off about that sort of thing and probably would’ve responded with any of a long list of messy amusements, but now...well.  
“Cool your ass, I’m busy! I’ll be there in a minute!” John hollered over his shoulder. Didn’t mean he had to take it lying down, though.  
He wasn’t actually busy, just loathe to leave the rusty glow of the furnace he was huddled by. Another of Pandora’s winters had started its slow creep across the years, and even the residents of the Dust felt the bite. Especially the ones that lived in shitty little shacks, which was most of them. He’d had to do some very thorough scrounging recently.  
...Shit. John frowned, his one good eye suddenly finding itself flickering around the room, taking in his surroundings and himself as if he was suddenly noticing it all for the first time. He tried to keep his shop in at least a semi-presentable state, but between trying to shut out the cold and general ennui he’d let it get a little on the fetid side lately. Made for good additional camoflauge, actually. The same probably couldn’t be said of the winter jacket he’d put over his usual stained and ripped work gear; he’d taken it off a dead bandit he’d come across, a man much definitely shorter than he was, and his thin wrists poked out of the sleeves prominently. John could disguise it some with work gloves and whatnot, but it was still a very obviously ill-fitting garment. And a stained and bullet hole-speckled one, he hadn’t gotten around to rinsing it out just yet.  
Normally he didn’t give a rakk’s ass about any of this, but that was when dealing with the various local degenerates. When dealing with someone halfway decent, it all just stood out like the old moonbase used to, glaring and obtrusive. It was goddamn embarrassing, being seen like this.  
The frown deepened, John inwardly cursing for several moments before pulling himself together and heaving his lanky frame out of the chair and away from the oily heat of the furnace. Oh, well. After everything else, she probably wouldn’t be scared off by any of this. She might laugh, though, which was worse in a way.  
John adjusted the collar of his jacket with as much pride as he had left, and finally made his way to the front room. He liked to think of it as his ‘office’, but it was just one of a miserable handful of near identical shitty little rooms in the shitty little building he’d claimed for himself.  
“Took ya long enough, hey!”  
“Welcome to John’s Loaders, we’re closed today but hopefully we can provide you with assistance another time,” he droned without the slightest piece of cheer or interest, leaning forward with his gloved hands flat on the counter before him. That last lingering spark of ego was a stubborn one at times.  
Gaige wrinkled her nose at him from over by the door, making an exasperated noise. “Really, man? You trying to be cute? ‘Cuz you and cute don’t really get along.”  
“You’re one of like five people on this planet that can read, there was a sign out front, you know.”  
The young woman smirked, gesturing towards the door. “Yeah, sure, I gotcha. I’ll just go then.” She fanned her fingers out dramatically. “I’ll simply take my business elsewhere—“  
John sighed, rolling his eye. “What d’ya want, kid?”  
She smirked again, clasping her hands behind her back and strolling slowly around the room, eyeing up the various gizmos and pieces of junk that lined every available surface. “Oh y’knowww, just in the neighborhood. Helping Miss Ellie with some car thieves, thought I’d drop innn.” Gaige came to a halt and looked the tall man up and down, cocking her head to the side with a grin. “Damn, man, you look a little worse every time I see ya.”  
The man formerly known as Handsome Jack scowled. She wasn’t wrong, and he hated her for that. Without the mask and without Hyperion he was just some old nobody with half a face, the slim remainders of his once legitimately decent face barely noticable in the midst of all the scarring and stubble and gloom.  
“Thank you for visiting John’s Loaders,” he replied woodenly. “Please come again.” He turned on his heel and made to go.  
“W-wait, hold up!” Gaige dropped the facade immediately, bounding forward and stretching across the counter to snatch at John’s sleeve. “C’mon, Uggo! I mean, John! C’monnn, I’m just joshin’ ya!”  
John briefly entertained a number of scathing replies in his head, but in the end just sighed and yanked his sleeve away. “God, fine.” He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and an expectant look, attempting to maintain his height and a haughty composure at the same time. He had nearly a solid foot on the girl in front of him; he had a feeling that at this point height was the only thing he had left over her, so he made use of it whenever possible.  
The mechromancer plopped back on her heels, likewise straightening to her own full if diminutive height, attempting to look nonchalant and cool. Two could play at this game. Two were playing at this game actually, inside she was biting back just as many retorts and sick burns. Skinny asshole had some nerve, acting like he was doing her a favor here. After everything that he’d done and wanted to do...  
But, well. He tended to actually listen, in the end. And even contribute, sometimes. She’d never really experienced that previously, and it’d probably be an absolute bitch to find a replacement.  
“Just you wait,” she said cheerfully, rummaging through a small satchel at her side. Her mood flipped like a switch, as it always did when she was able to focus on that which she loved best. “I bet even you’ll like this. This shit’s tighter than your ass.” She just as cheerfully waved off the middle finger the tall man subsequently presented her with without looking.  
A small sausage-y shaped thing with wires coming out of it was held aloft. “Da na na naaa!” Gaige leaned forward again, bringing it closer. “Neat, yeah?”  
John squinted at it, arms still crossed. He was neither budging or impressed. “..How so, exactly? Gotta gimme a little more than that, kiddo.”  
Gaige’s expression had begun to cloud over, then she realized. Just because someone was smart didn’t mean they were psychic. That was a fact she never quite managed to keep in mind, even now. Hmm. Maybe she should look into that sometime, actually. Some sort of brain-scanner...  
“Right, right. It’s a finger! That is, a cybernetic one.” She held it out to John in her equally cybernetic left hand, as if to give it added credence. “New and improved design, just finished it this morning!”  
Silent, unmoving seconds ticked by, and just as Gaige was about to retract the finger in embarrassment John finally pushed himself away from the wall, shuffling forward and taking it from her. He brought it up close to his face, squinting with effort at the thing.  
With a quick glance back at her John set it on the counter, rummaging in a pocket and pulling out a cracked and scratched pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Normally he had a strange little metal disc tied over his ruined left eye to protect the socket, the remains of a botched self-upgrade attempt, but today it’d been too damn cold and he hadn’t bothered. One bright blue eye and one drooping, empty blue-stained eyelid peered out from behind the smudged frames, and with another quick look at her he bent over the counter to get more of the light, taking the finger up in both hands and examining it closely.  
Gaige beamed. He was showing legitimate interest now, just like she knew he would eventually. When John stopped sneering and got squinting, it was business time. Even surly asshole engineers got down to business when the right idea showed up.  
The beaming slowly morphed, the impatient, giddy silence of expectation replaced by the studied, fascinated silence of a thoughtful observer. While John studied her work, she studied John. Even after the passage of a fair amount of time and a certain amount of familiarity, it was hard not to with the man.  
It was utterly bizarre, really. She was smart, she knew it was bizarre. A few years ago and she’d been fighting for her life, heart pounding and various wounds flowing freely, running amok with newfound friends in a battle to the death with a crazed conquerer, a dictator with a mean streak a mile wide who’d nearly split the whole damn planet in half simply out of spite. A jeering, snarling, laughing pile of bad fashion and bad attitude, who was currently hunched before her and studying her work very quietly.  
She hadn’t a goddamn clue how the son of a bitch had survived, she’d been sure he was toast. Everybody had been sure! And yet here he was, and very mum about how. A rickety repair shop, with “John’s Loaders” in great big letters and everything, right out in the open in the Dust, one of the openest places there was on Pandora. And somehow, nobody had figured it out, nobody had noticed. Except her of course, ‘cos she was the mechromancer, she was fucking smart. But still, son of a bitch. How’d he keep managing it?  
It had been intensely tempting to burn the whole sorry place to the ground with him in it. She could’ve told the others and invited them over, told them to bring marshmallows. But, there was always that ‘but’. In the midst of all the earlier madness, there’d been a few brief flashes of...something. Interest? Curiosity? A few double-takes at unexpected similar opinions, or one of them beating the other to the same joke in an ECHO taunt. One time he’d actually gone a little silent for a while, before giving her a few terse instructions on how better to juryrig the amalgamated loader she’d slapped together in a desperate corner against some bandits.  
This was win-win, as far as Gaige was concerned. She got to keep an eye on Jack, Formerly Handsome, and make sure he stayed out of trouble, and she also got someone she could have an actual conversation with to boot.  
And yet. Odd feelings abounded. She was technically conversing with the enemy, after all. Hanging out with, even. If any of the other vault hunters found out, there would be fire. And lots of it. Having things in common with such a twisty bastard was also probably not ideal.  
But. It had been a couple years, now. Nearly one since she’d refound him. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any fight left in Jack, now John. Oh, he was still a mouthy asshole, proud and argumentive and sneering and bluffing. But mostly he just seemed tired. Tired and wrung out and listless, not caring what happened next so long as it didn’t involve his death. It was a far cry from the strutting CEO of yesteryear.  
No fancy CEO clothes here. No fancy anything. Just rags and junk and a faint smell of gasoline and stale sweat. The rigorously maintained pompadour had been chopped off, the tattoo hidden beneath stained cloth. That unsettling mask was long gone, leaving behind the expected yet unexpected mess underneath for all to see. Seriously, what had even made that vault-shaped scar? A brand? What sort of brand turns skin such a weird shade of blue, anyhow?  
Okay, she was definitely staring, now. Her inquisitive mind got caught up in curiosities very easily, and John certainly qualified as one. The painfully deep blue scar that took up most of his face, all twisty and branching and puckered at the edges; the evenly-spaced patches of new scar tissue around his chin and the edges of his face where he’d gouged out his mask clasps, the missing eye, the new nicks and cuts and little scars he’d gained since the showdown, the patchy stubble...and underneath all that, one startlingly blue eye and a number of hints that added up to the revelation that the aforementioned mask had been a far more accurate representation than thought.  
She was right, though, as usual. He was looking worse. Every time she popped by he was a little more haggard, a little more gaunt, a little more greying. The return of winter was likely helping things along now as well.  
Good, thought part of Gaige. The rest of her wasn’t entirely sure what it thought.  
John finally looked up, and the quick movement of the girl’s eyes everywhere around the room but towards him confirmed his suspicion. His one intact eyebrow furrowed in annoyance, but he made no comment.  
“Yeah, okay, so you’ve been working on an improved cybernetics design, I can see that,” he said, gesturing with it in his hand like it was a cigar. “More lifelike layout and better joint mobility, that’s cool. That thing at the tip, with those grooves it can’t just be for gripping, trying for better sensory detection there too?” She nodded. “Thought so. Fingerprint like a bloody goliath there, better pare that shit down.”  
John eyed her over the rim of his glasses, like the world’s most battle-scarred librarian who’d just caught wind of a lateness fine that was unlikely to be paid. “Why just a finger, though?”  
Gaige smiled nervously, mismatched hands in pockets. “Why not just a finger? Something small to start off with, build up from there once you have the design down pat!”  
The grizzled man continued to peer up at her suspiciously, elbows propped on the counter and finger grip demoted from cigar to hotdog that had been dropped on the floor. Gaige hung her head. “I’d made a whole hand but it kinda, um, exploded,” she mumbled, way more meekly than she’d intended.  
“Was it sensory ove-“  
“It was sensory overload.”  
“Pfff. Amateur.”  
The mechromancer bristled, hands exiting pockets and balling into little fists. “Excuse you, mister!”  
“Amateur mistake!” John repeated, waggling the finger at her. “You always go too big too fast, kid!”  
“Stop calling me kid! I can drink now and stuff!”  
“You were probably drinking when ya made this, then,” he sneered. John dropped it without ceremony on the counter. “It’s always the same; too much power, too many instructions overwhelming the processors, too much everything. And then blammo!” He gestured expressively to underline the last word. “Every time. Hell, I still remember those old ECHOs of yours, this shit’s what got you stuck here in the first pla-“  
Another metal finger, still attached to its metal hand, materialized directly under his nose. “Too far, Jack. Do not go there,” Gaige growled, warningly. “Do not push it!”  
John flinched at the sound of his old nickname, grimacing and flushing angrily. The reddening was quickest and darkest around the ridged edges of the vault scar, mottling his face. Dangerous rage and naked fear both lit up briefly in his working eye.  
“Fine,” he grumbled after several tense seconds. His lip twisted into a snarl, which did not help his appearance in any way. “Fine! Fine!” John threw up his hands. “And here I thought you came here asking for my opinion! Golly, silly me!”  
Stepping out of the surprised girl’s reach, the thin man adjusted his jacket again and waved her off, looking away. “I’m too busy for this shit,” he grumbled. “Go bother Hodunk again or something, I got crap to do!” And with that he disappeared through the splintering doorway.  
Gaige stood there, threatening finger now pointed at the empty air. After her brain parsed this development her lips pursed, and she shook said finger at the doorway in silent outrage. Her mouth opened and shut a few times as various insults presented themselves and fought for release; in the end she just pursed her lips a second time and furiously threw up the middle finger with both hands at the doorway, waggling them vigorously at no one in particular.  
Angrily she made to go, wondering why in the hell she’d even bothered making various plans and coming here when there were less bright but far more deserving people elsewhere. Deathtrap was waiting just out front, hiding behind a scrap heap to attract less attention, maybe she would hop on him and go back to Ellie’s, try to salvage the night. There was nothing here but junk.  
Her hand was on the doorknob when something occured to her, and she paused, listening. It was...quiet. Like, really quiet. Dead silent, even. Thinking on it, it had been this silent when she’d first popped in, too.  
Usually when an engineer-slash-repairman worked on something, there was some sort of sound. It was a noisy area of work after all, full of metal and tools and electricity. Even the more delicate stuff featured little scrapes and sparks, the tiny nudges of elbows and boots and tools on the bench. This silence was the complete and utter absence of all movement.  
Frowning and curious, Gaige crept back to the counter and stood there on tiptoe, listening intently with ear cocked exaggeratedly. Still nothing. ...He hadn’t died back there just now, had he?  
Curiosity killed the cat. Luckily, she was both human and a genius. She lifted the corner flap of the counter with great care and tiptoed up to the glowing rectangle of light, peeping one eye around the doorframe.  
The room was small, stained and cluttered. A sad little mattress with a pile of threadbare blankets salvaged from god knows where lay on a couple of crates in one corner, several ripped magazine pages and posters tacked up above it. One or two were very inappropriate. A small workbench with various tools, a radio and a blackened tabletop cooker took up another corner.  
Against the wall between the two was a small rusty furnace, glowing hot and bright with whatever the hell was burning in there. Probably oil and scrubby plants and random junk; the Dust wasn’t exactly bursting with plantlife, or much of anything outside of sand and rock.  
John was crouched low in a rickety little chair, elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He was bent forward quite dangerously close to the furnace, actually, but everything about his body language spoke of a man who needed to soak up every drop of heat he could. Watching, she realized that his fingers were moving slowly, rubbing and traveling very gingerly around the edges of and over the top of the ruined flesh of the vault scar.  
It all came together to make for one very sad and actually rather pathetic little scene. Despite herself, something in Gaige’s insides sank.  
She withdrew her head and thought for a while, chewing on her lip. Ah, hell with it. The bastard didn’t deserve any of it, but it just wouldn’t feel right somehow if she up and left now; the mental image of the huddled, haggard figure by the little fire would stick in her mind.  
Gaige ducked her head fully around the frame and cleared her throat. “Heyyyy.”  
The thin man jumped, nearly cracking his skull on the furnace. Hissing and swearing, he twisted round in his seat to glare at her. The glasses were gone, tucked away again, his disheveled, greying hair even more awry than before.  
“Goddamn, kid, don’t do that! What the fuck, get outta here! This is, this is private!” Whatever wasn’t blue of John’s face was now bright red, both from heat and angry embarrassment. The embarrassment in particular was as clear as his scars; it was obvious that nobody ever came back here but him and him alone. Very alone.  
“Yeah whatever,” Gaige chirped, walking into the room anyway and picking her way through loader parts and old cans. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your work, sorry!”  
John grit his teeth at that obvious jab. The mechromancer had expected him to leap up and argue with her again, telling her off for the intrusion and blustering about making her leave. Instead he’d pulled his ripped jacket tighter around himself, sliding and slumping down in his seat with long skinny legs pointing out at awkward angles, turning his face to look in the opposite direction without a word.  
He was angry as hell, but too goddamned mortified to do a blessed thing about it. He’d been a god amongst men previously; now here he was, a cold, half-starved nobody shivering in a smelly little shithole with one of the people who’d put him there taking it all in. It was humiliating, and he knew that if he attempted to say or do anything about it it’d just look even more pathetic. Best to just wait it out and get really goddamn drunk later.  
“Hey Uggo, you got any water in here?”  
John blinked a few times, leaving his moody reverie, and looked at the girl out of the corner of his eye, not turning his head fully. “...Water?”  
“Yeah, water? Y’know, the wet stuff? Ya got any in here, or do you just live on sand?”  
Still slumped, the lanky man wordlessly pointed to a pair of lidded buckets next to the workbench.  
“Thanks!” Gaige said cheerfully, undoing the latches and popping the top off of one. It looked moderately drinkable, and heating it up would do the rest. Looking around the room she gathered up a pair of cracked and mismatched mugs and a small pot, and set some of the water to boiling.  
“Okay. Just what the hell are you doing? In my private room with my stuff, I might add,” John said after a while.  
The young woman was rooting around in her satchel once more. “Making some hot cocoa, duh.”  
John’s brows knit, and his eye went around the room in a couple different directions, like he was looking for clues to help him puzzle this out. “Okay. Why?”  
Gaige turned to busy herself with the mugs, shrugging at the man behind her. “It’s cold, hot cocoa’s always the best thing when it’s cold out. And...my dad always used to make it for me. When I needed a little something.”  
At this John wrinkled his nose, which crinkled the vault scar in odd ways. “Wow, yeah, okay, if I remind you of your dad I’m out of here.”  
She twisted her head round to look at him over her shoulder, her whole face scrunched up in mild horror. “Guh, no way. Jesus Christ, no!”  
John’s mouth tweaked sideways, as pursed in annoyance as Gaige’s had been earlier. “...Good.” Glad as he was about the answer, the instant and repulsed nature of it struck a wrong chord in him.  
They waited in silence for several minutes, neither sure where to go next after that last exchange. The water hissed and bubbled with slowly increasing intensity. There were no windows in this room, but once in a while a faint creak and whistle in the walls hinted at the cold winds of the desert night in winter that were starting to pick up.  
“Right!” Gaige said brightly out of nowhere, clapping her hands. John started in surprise, scowling and reddening at his own fearful behavior. The young woman turned to the pot and the mugs again. “I think it’s ready!”  
Using her cybernetic hand she grabbed up the pot and carefully poured the steaming contents into the two waiting mugs. Setting it down again she reached for a spoon, then realized she’d forgotten to actually get one in the first place.  
Gaige peered about the room, but quickly gave up on that particular search; even if she was able to find one after a while, it likely wouldn’t be in the best of shape for use. Instead she just scrabbled around amongst the tools on the workbench and selected the shiniest screwdriver she could find, dipped it in the remainder of the pot’s boiling water for several moments, then used it to finish stirring in the powder and dried marshmallows in the mugs. Hey, geniuses had to think on their feet.  
“Here you go, grumpy.” She proffered the larger of the two mugs to John. “Somethin’ nice and hot that isn’t skag meat.”  
John regarded the mug suspiciously. His eye flickered between the steaming, swirling white-speckled brown of its contents and the earnest young face above it.  
“..Yeah, thanks,” he mumbled quietly, taking it up in both hands and locking his eye on the furnace, away from her. People being legitimately friendly to him was a thing he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around. His brain tended to refuse to process it as anything other than pity or a trap or fakeness.  
“You’re welcome.” Gaige looked down at her own mug, blushing very slightly and feeling incredibly embarrassed all of a sudden. Geeze, she hoped she’d done this right. “Give it a few so you don’t burn your tongue.”  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m not stupid, c’mon,” came the reply, just as mumbled and not-looking-at-her as the last.  
The silence crept up on them, as it always seemed to eventually. For all that they had in common and could talk and tinker over, there was still that gulf, dark and yawning, between them. Occasionally it felt to Gaige like the beginnings of a bridge had been built on either side, and that they were slowly working their way out, to meet in the middle. Other times it felt like the framework had all come crashing down in the night, leaving the gulf as wide as ever, and staring back up at her.  
Leaning against the workbench, she found her eyes drawn back towards John, another of those recurring little eventualities with these visits. It wasn’t a holy shit, Handsome Jack is right there across from me thing, or even that unfortunate tendency of human curiosity to fixate on the deformed and scarred. There was just something about the old bastard that drew her eye and made her thoughtful.  
He was hunched forward again, still cupping the hot chocolate in both hands, staring fixedly at the furnace. John seemed to have become lost in his own thoughts after things had settled down; his thumbs moved idly back and forth across the surface of the mug, the way he held it hinted at just how much he was savoring the heat of the thing.  
Gaige took care not to stare outright too much, the man had developed a keen sixth sense for gawkers. His hands were broad, large, calloused and weathered. That had taken her by surprise, when she’d first noticed that. She’d expected the hands of a rich douchebag businessman to be pale and smooth as an ass, but no; he’d kicked and clawed and killed all the way up from nothing, working hard all the way. In John’s rare maudlin moments he’d sneer about how he’d ended up right where he’d started in life. They were a true blue engineer’s hands.  
John’s eye slid down from the furnace to the mug. He lifted it, hesitantly, sniffing and peering at it. After a long pause he seemed to shrug to himself, and shifted his grip on it to just his left hand, several rough fingers wedged inside the handle. Gingerly, slowly, he raised it to his face, and pressed it firmly against the empty eyelid and deep-cut scar tissue below it. He bit his lip at first contact, then something between a groan and a sigh escaped.  
What. Gaige’s eyebrows knit together so hard they nearly melded into one. This was an unexpected development. “You, uh, okay there, John? Cocoa goes in your mouth, buddy.”  
The thin man’s working eye snapped open and settled on her with the exact air of a man who’d forgotten he had company. He flushed around the edges of the vault scar again, but did not remove the mug. “Wow, yeah, I had no fucking clue, thanks,” he said sarcastically, one or two drops of cocoa spilling out. “I’ll drink it when I’m good and ready.”  
She stuck her tongue out at him, then slurped her own cocoa very loudly. Watching him maintain the odd position, something finally occured to her, and her expression softened. “Oh,” she said quietly, in a way that made John instantly uncomfortable. “Your face hurts, doesn’t it.”  
John glowered. The face in question went fully red again, and he opened his mouth to lash out at her. But...fuck it. What was the use? Instead he just heaved a loud, disgruntled sigh, and slid back in the old chair like earlier, slouched and sagging and legs out, taking care not to disturb the mug’s contents.  
“Yeah, it does. Like goddamn hell it does. Fucked up face like this, you think it wouldn’t?” Uncharacteristically honest as he was being, he was doing so with bad grace and his usual attitude. “Mostly just in winter. You know how us old people are.” He curled his lip in sarcastic ill humor and shut his eye. “Always getting stiff and achey in the cold. Next thing you know my knees’ll go.”  
“Oh.” Despite his rudeness, Gaige felt an odd pang of sympathy. She found herself wondering just how many problems a scarred-up face like that caused, outside of the obvious one. Her quickly-moving mind also wondered how many years it had been like that; had it been like that even when he was Jack, grinning and sauntering? Had it helped Jack along to being Jack, in some small way? Hell, what had even done that damage in the first place? She’d be surprised if she ever got an answer to that one.  
Gaige sipped at her cocoa, much more quietly this time. “..You got a spare sock or anything? Stuff it with beans or rice, it makes a super great heating pad. I could bring you some-“  
“I don’t want your pity,” John snapped. This whole evening was starting to feel like one long humiliating attack on his pride.  
“Ugh, it’s not pity, come on!” Gaige snapped back in irritation. She rubbed her forehead with her human hand. “God, d’you still not get what ‘being nice’ is? It’s, it’s...sometimes people just do things for each other, y’know?”  
John said nothing for some time. The mechromancer exhaled huffily into her cocoa and watched him, waiting. The furnace seemed to be his focal point for whenever he was thinking something over or pushing some inner conflict down; she could see the hints of some sort of turmoil plain in the varying lines of his face and in that one very unfairly blue eye.  
He finally lowered the mug from his face, frowning and chewing on his lip. “...Yeah, some beans might be nice. As, y’know, part of your payment.” John still didn’t look at her as he spoke. “Next time you need shit fixed or whatever.”  
She managed a small smile. Hey, he was trying. That was something. “Sure man, I’m sure I’ll need some shit fixed before long. I’m good but I’m no experienced master engineer, y’know? S’why I still come here.”  
The older man angrily turned to study her face, to see if she was mocking him again. She just maintained that same little smile, cheeky as ever but not insultingly so. John snorted, and finally took a sip of the cocoa. He immediately pulled a face. “Christ, that is sweet, kid! I’m trying to save what’s left of my teeth here!”  
“Hey, it’s just fine! You’re just an old man who hasn’t had anything properly tasty in a while, that’s all! Your palate’s been asleep!” Her smile turned into a genuine grin and she resumed her loud slurping.  
“Hrmph.” A pause. “You, uh, speaking of payments and things. You kill any of those nomad guys while you’re out, I’ll take one of those big coats they’re always wearing as part of a payment, too. Just. By the by.”  
“Yeah? Noteeed.”  
“Jush, ah, wash it out first, yeah?”  
“I’ll think about it. Maybe.”  
John shifted position, unhunching with what Gaige swore was the faintest little lightning flash of a smile. Not the faked shmooze of a CEO posing for the camera, or the rictus of a wicked man who was going to enjoy what he did next, but an actual smile, genuine and quiet and gone in a blink. She nearly spilled some of her cocoa.  
“You know,” John said, with a brightness to his voice that distracted the girl from her drink further, “I bet I’d look pretty damn good in one of those coats. Real damn ha—dashing. Tall and dashing, it wouldn’t drag and flop around like it does on those nomad assholes.”  
A vision of a pair of long and skinny legs poking out of the bottom of one of those massive coats appeared before Gaige. She stifled the snorty giggle with her knuckles, quickly following it with a gulp of hot liquid that slightly burned her tongue.  
He didn’t appear to notice the vote of no confidence. John mused to himself, stained thumb and forefinger rubbing his scruffy chin. A smirk, this time with a definite hint of Jack-ishness, ticked at the edges of his mouth. “Maybe I could trim it a little, find a decent belt that matches it.”  
Another larger, slower sip of the cocoa. John didn’t pull a face this time; it was still cloyingly sweet, and off-tasting in that way that so much of the food on Pandora unfortunately was, but it was warm and comforting all the way down, as promised. The girl watched him carefully.  
“Show off my figure, you know?” John felt pleasantly warm, moreso than he had in a while. Relaxed, even; maybe a little cheerful as well, of all things. It tended to be pretty damn lonely and bitter there in the loader shop, and this change in evening routine was having its effect.  
“You say that like you have a figure, Johnny,” Gaige interjected cheerfully. With one last hasty sip she set her mug back on the workbench and crossed her arms, still watching the man.  
His mouth was occupied with mug and cocoa, so he merely flipped her a silent bird with his free hand. Middle fingers as punctuation were a common element of even the friendliest of their conversations.  
“I damn well do,” he said finally after he swallowed, gesturing sleepily. “Best fucking figure in all the Dust.” John yawned into the back of his hand. “They oughtta put ornaments of me up on their trucks instead’a Hodunk.”  
John’s eyelid drooped; the wearying cold of the day had taken it out of him despite the shop being closed, this sudden explosion of calming warmth after that was sinking him fast.  
“Oughtta make some an’ sell ‘em,” he murmured, leaning back in his chair, half-closed eye pointed in the direction of the furnace’s glowing little doorhatch but not actually seeing it. “Bet I’d sell ‘em real good...”  
Gaige moved swiftly, catching the mug with her robotic hand as it slipped out of the man’s grasp, feeling a small flush of pride at having done so without letting all that much of its hot contents slop out. She quickly set it aside and moved eagerly back to the man’s side, where she stood in silence for several minutes. The mechromancer watched him closely with the intent eagerness of an exploratory researcher, keeping a lookout for even the smallest of clues.  
Satisfied that he was out like a light, Gaige patted him lightly on the shoulder before trotting over to the workbench. “You’re a real piece of work, man,” she said softly to herself.  
John regained consciousness slowly, sensations of light and sound drifting in and being registered ever so gradually, accompanied by a regular throbbing. The more awake he became, the more painful the throbbing got. The moment he could have a coherent thought again John desperately wished it was the other way around.  
He blearily squinted up at the ceiling, focusing his eye on the little cracks and pockmarks marring its surface. A low groan rattled out of his dry mouth; clutching his aching head, he tried to remember how much he’d drunk the night before. Rakk ale really hit you hard if you didn’t pay atte— wait.  
John’s eye went round and wide, despite how much the light made it smart. Wait a fucking minute. He hadn’t been drinking the night before, he hadn’t made his usual supply rounds yet and was all out of booze. Was it even the night before at all, or was it still the same night? He could’ve sworn it had just been early evening, and he’d been having a sullen but quiet time of it, and then the kid had come by with cocoa, and—  
“Oh hey, you’re finally up!” Gaige said cheerfully over her shoulder as the older man sat bolt upright on his shabby little bed. “Welcome back to the land of the living yo, thought I was gonna have to bribe Dr. Zed for a little assistance for a few minutes there!” She glanced between his face and his musty pillow. “..You drool a lot when you’re out, you know that?”  
“Did...wh-...” John looked around in cold panic, head snapping back and forth as he frantically checked his surroundings. His pillow was damp and Gaige was doing something at his workbench, but everything else seemed to be in order. A distant metallic humming told him that the girl’s clunky robot-thing was now somewhere in the front room rather than outside. “Did you fucking drug me??”  
Gaige brought the thumb and forefinger of her cyborg hand together till they almost touched, also over her shoulder. She was still busy with something. “Maybe a little.”  
“A little?!” Fury gripped John, and he sprang to his feet, fists clenched. And then immediately collapsed on his bed again, panting. He was awake now but the shit was still in his system, leaving him weak and addled. “Godammit. Godammit!” he growled through gritted teeth, waiting for the world to stop swimming. “How fucking dare you, what the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?”  
“Believe it or not, I’m helping you!” Gaige snapped. She spun around with hands on hips, frowning in annoyance at John. It was a slightly pathetic sight, seeing the lanky man sprawled on his bed like that, sweating despite the cold and with narrow chest heaving up and down. More than once that night as she’d worked the terrible fleeting thought of just how easily she could end things once and for all right here and now had cropped up. Among other, more guilty and cheek-flushing thoughts.  
John pushed himself back into a sitting position, wiping perspiration and half-dried saliva off his face with his forearm. “Helping me? Helping me?? Oh yeah sure, I bet you called all your bandit friends over, they’re gonna be out there waiting for me! Set up a nice little trap for me! Or you did something to my shop, or to fucking me!”  
As he said that he looked down at himself sharply, patting his frame and making sure all his limbs and pieces were still there. The jacket he’d been wearing was off, set aside on a crate after a quick second inspection of the room, but otherwise everything else about himself seemed to be the same.  
Then suspicion took a firmer and more specific hold, and he started feeling his face. His questing fingers came upon what felt like a bandage over his left eyelid, one that he hadn’t quite noticed before between the addled panic and screwed up sensory output of that part of his flesh.  
“What—“ A nagging feeling that had been building since he’d woken up finally hit home. Ever since he’d removed its occupant, John had gotten used to the sensation of emptiness behind his left eyelid. Now however, through the throbbing, he could feel something in there.  
“The fuck did you do to me?!” John got to his feet a second time, unsteadily lurching towards the watching girl and towering over her, hands clutching at the empty air at his sides and teeth bared in fury. He was scared, Gaige could see the terror in his face, but she could see the anger as well. Maaaybe she could have approached this better.  
She made conciliatory gestures with her hands, then placed them on his chest and pushed him gently but firmly back several steps. “Like I said, I helped you,” she replied, attempting to speak soothingly, as if to a cranky child. “I wanted to surprise you with something! Something real cool, but you had to be out for it! So I got a tranq from old Hammerlock, that’s all. Uh, bit stronger than I thought it’d be. But, y’know, you looked like you needed a good nap anyway. Everything turned out okay!” Gaige beamed.  
John was all snarling, spitting fury inside, and being so easily pushed aside by a thin slip of a girl did nothing to improve this. “Don’t you ‘okay’ at me!” He shook a finger at her, wobbling very slightly in place as he focused hard on maintaining his balance. “Just because you’re a big bad vault hunter badass-“ the finger waving transformed into unsteady air quotes at this part “-doesn’t mean you can just waltz on in here and do as you fuckin’ like! I’m not some helpless little guinea pig just waiting to be used!”  
Geeze, she wished he’d calm down already. Gawd. “Oh wow, so sorry Mr. John,” she snapped back at him, his ungrateful attitude getting to her. “I had no idea you were against using people as guinea pigs!”  
The intense concentration involved in keeping upright was all that stopped him from visibly flinching at that little jab. His hands twitched and clutched at the air some more, aching to grab onto something and squeeze. John took a step forward, scowling hard with eye blazing. “Nice. Nice. Aren’t you supposed to be ‘better’ than that, kiddo? Better than me? Hmm?”  
Gaige stood up straight, her own hands clenching. The two of them stood like that for several infinitely long moments, staring hard and staring angrily at each other, the air practically electric and sparking from how tense and poised for something messy to happen their bodies were. The bridge supports were burning to a crisp.  
“I think,” Gaige finally said, slowly and with great self control. Of the two, she had a definite knack for being the one to make the first move. “I think, that before this goes any further, that you should just look in the stupid mirror and actually see what I did. And then you can be mad if you want, Johnny.”  
Something about that caught him offguard. The earnestness of it plowed right through his boiling outrage to his core like acid, leaving him as confused and uncertain as when he’d first woken up. He was still mad, he was still itching, but...  
John seemed to deflate, his angry eye losing some of its burning intensity, and falling to rest on something on the floor. “Don’t have a mirror,” he muttered, hands drooping limp to his sides. “Nothin’ here worth looking at.”  
“Oh. Ah?” Gaige hadn’t expected that. “Um. Maybe there’s something, uh, we can use like a mirror. Or, uh, maybe I have something we can use...” She turned away to look, blushing furiously.  
John stood silently as she scrambled, the slowly dissipating but everpresent throbbing coupled with a preoccupation with just what the hell was currently inside his head was doing a bang-up job of helping him be distracted from that supremely awkward interaction that had just occured. The anger ebbed and flowed away; he was too embarrassed and too grody-feeling for it to last.  
Of course, what happened within the next few minutes or so might give him a second wind in that regard, depending. If there was one thing he was still good at, it was finding extra reserves of anger when needed.  
“Here!” Gaige held up a small, scratched purple case in triumph. There wasn’t a single thing in the workshop that wasn’t tarnished or rusted past saving, so she’d had to give in and rustle around in her personal bag for something. “Kinda dinky, but it’ll do.”  
He took it wordlessly, staring at the little hinged thing. “What..” John flipped it open one-handedly. “..Oh.” His eyebrow arched, and he gave Gaige one of those infuriating, nasty lop-sided smirks that had made her grit her teeth with anger and maybe something else back in the day. “Makeup case, huh? Big date later?”  
The loudest, dorkiest snort she could come up with hid her self-conscious fluster. “Ugh, please! Sometimes a girl just wants to be as punk as she can possibly be at all times! No cutesy pink or any of that shit in there!” Inwardly she cursed further, because she knew damn well that whenever she decided she was going to drop by the loader shop that stupid case and a few other fussy bits and bobs that she rarely bothered with much always seemed to find their way into her bag. “Now c’mon, get on with it! It’ll be great, you’ll see.”  
She waggled her eyebrows and winked so cartoonishly after emphasizing that last word that it was offensive. Christ, thought John. This is one of the mighty vault hunters that took me down?  
Sighing, he held up the little case and stared into the mirror above the black and purple squares, not even bothering to adjust his position to get a better lit view. Ah, yes. He grimaced, like he’d just tasted something foul and bitter. There was his face, same as when he’d last caught a glimpse of its reflection. A crookedly taped piece of gauze covered his missing eye, but the rest was the same; a gaunt, weathered face, tanned and hardened and covered in grey-peppered, slightly patchy stubble. His hair lank and mussy, increasingly grey, with ill-kept sideburns on either side. His lone eye baggy and tired and dull-looking, several shiny flecks of scarred skin denoting where his clasps had been. And that damned brand, twisting and puckering and embedded deep in his face, still as unnaturally vivid and blue as the day he’d received it.  
The case drooped. It was tempting to call it quits at just that. To chuck that little mirror right back at Gaige or better yet, into the furnace, and never have to look at the wreckage of his face again. So what if he had something in his head, he’d live with it. Plain old gauze probably made for a better covering than that stupid shitty metal fuck-up of his that he had there usually. Just anything so he wouldn’t have to look again.  
But the brilliant little mechromancer was standing right there, eager and nervous and full of hands-clasped anticipation. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to stop now. Brushing her off, disappointing her, it would feel...well, bad. Ugh.  
Bringing the mirror up again with a fresh grimace, he slowly reached a hand up towards the gauze. His dirty fingers hovered for several seconds, and he yanked it off, the sting of the tape hardly even registering on the deadened flesh. Then the world grew in size and scope.  
He could feel the machinery kicking into gear. For the first time in years, his field of vision was full, depth perception perfect. The lefthand side swarmed with strange saturated colors, fuzzy outlines and unsettling overlays, but he could see.  
It was overwhelming as shit. His knees buckled ever so slightly and the room began to swim again, his weakened system not at all prepared for this development. “You...you...” John stammered and sputtered, eye...no, eyes fixated on his reflection.  
It was very obviously a fake eye. The orb peering out from under his tattered blue-stained eyelid was very definitely comprised of metal parts, all different shades of grey and black shaped to look like an eyeball. The little glassy pupil in the middle shone with a subtle but notable bright green light. A nice touch, that.  
John became aware that he was sitting on his bed again. Gaige had helpfully steered his stunned, lanky frame back to it before he hit the floor from shock; he hadn’t even noticed.  
“You...” He turned his scarred mug, wide-eyed and incredulous, towards her. Quite the opposite of a few minutes ago, it had taken great effort to tear his gaze away from the mirror. John simply couldn’t find the words. “..Why??”  
Despite gearing herself up for this moment ever since she’d first hit upon the idea, Gaige was bright red with pride and a whole host of other feelings, some of them pretty embarrassing ones. But mostly just because she was a great big nervous nerd. It clashed terribly with the orange of her hair, and she started bouncing on her heels just to do something with all the extra energy she found herself with now. Not the most poised moment of an eventual award-winning inventor genius.  
“Well I mean, why not!” she burbled. “It’s hard to come across good modifications on Pandora, and your old hunk’a junk wasn’t workin-“ She tripped over herself there; John’s eyes had narrowed. The fact that his own attempt at a cybernetic eye had fallen flat had always been a wound to his engineering pride. “-Aaaand I thought hey, even good ones like Mister Hammerlock’s got aren’t all that good, and it’d probably help you with your work, sooooo....y’know. Y’know!” She gestured vaguely.  
The sting of being one-upped by a goofy girl that was most definitely his junior was there, but it was a small sting. The enormity of the gesture was...well, immense. It was a strange sensation, the cybernetic addition to his vision, and the warm feel of the device in his head, but it was a beautiful one.  
“I...well, I...well, shit, kid. This is, th-this is a hell of a thing, this...” He still couldn’t really find any words. It embarrassed him, made him think of old times with nerdy little Johnny stammering and gulping away. But what could you say to this? The warmth of the cybernetic eye spread across his face unbidden.  
Oh no no no no, Gaige could see, half hidden by the massive scar and everything else, the blush that was starting to form on the man’s face. And his eye – the real, gooshy white one – was it looking a little more glossy than it was previously? Ohhhh noooo. She’d hoped for some sort of positive response from John, but she wasn’t prepared for, like, actual legit emotion or anything. She didn’t think he had any of that in him, she wasn’t prepared for this. Her own blush started traveling downwards, blooming across her neck and collarbone.  
“You’re, uh, wel- uh, heck, it was nothin’.”  
John gripped the mirror case like death, willing himself to stay calm. Goddamn he so did not want to lose it in front of the kid, even after this ‘present’. He had nobody left to impress or intimidate or fool, except maybe himself, but even so. Blinking furiously a few times, he risked a quick look and noted the bright red everything, the fidgeting, the hands fooling around with nothing and then clasping behind her back. Nope, still no words, oh god. ..Well. Maybe one.  
“I..I..” His voice was low and hoarse, and his gaze rooted to his own hands, holding the little case mirror-down in his lap. John looked like something was being yanked out with great difficulty, like a bit of gristle out from between some teeth.  
“I...thanks, kiddo.”  
Well. There it was. It came off very much like it was one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to say in his life, but he’d said it. And it was genuine. Forget cool robot eyes, she’d gotten Handsome Jack to say ‘thanks’ like he meant it. Now that was a momentous achievement.  
Turned out, connecting on an honest human level had a calming effect alongside the expected fulfilling one. Gaige stopped her bouncing and fidgeting, easing back against the workbench with arms crossed in a satisfied manner.  
“Hey, it’s like I said earlier,” she replied. John raised his eyes to hers and saw her smile; faint focal guides and data popups blipped into view on the lefthand side and encircled her face like a frame, somehow making her warmth and cheer pop out even more. “Sometimes people just do things for each other. You’re welcome, Uggo.”  
Oh boy, was the heat ever spreading across his face. More outlines and symbols and readouts filled his vision and hovered around Gaige, like—well, the thing probably was reading his mind. That’s how this sort of thing tended to work.  
“Place like Pandora, folks like me? Dunno how many ‘people’ would actually do that ‘round these parts, kid. But, well...it’s a nice thought. So...thanks.” God, he was going to do some heavy drinking when all this was over. He’d probably used up his emotional reserves for the next five months.  
John’s expression of sheepish gratitude developed a small frown. Something that had been nagging him for the past few minutes had finally caught up and hit home. “Er, Gaige. These little overlays, they go away eventually, don’t they?”  
“Yeah, they should come and go pretty quickly once you get the hang of it! I was real proud of programming those in.”  
“Right.” The fiddly little pieces of text and images were steadily building up in the cybernetic part of his vision, messily obscuring his view like spam ads on the ECHOnet. As he was still feeling the effects of his unplanned nap, it was making for one hell of a headache.  
“Only, they’re not really going anywhere, like at all. No matter how hard I think it,” John continued. His fingers shifted nervously on the compact case. It had additionally dawned on him that maybe the heat in his face was from more than just emotion. It had a very alarmingly centralized feel to it.  
“Really?” Gaige joined in on the frowning. “They’re supposed to be really intuitive and responsive, maybe the code needs a little messing with. Luckily I made the port accessible from the front for easy fixin’!” She twisted sideways to look behind herself at the workbench, searching for the right tool. She also tried very hard to not think about the disembodied, wire-spewing finger laying on the counter in the other room. Just a quick jab at the right spot and she’d bring up the three dimensional menu, no problem...  
There was a problem. John’s eyes darted around the room as his nervousness increased, and the overlays went exponential. Everything he looked at caused a new swarm of useless sensory information to appear, and he could feel the eye getting hotter. And hotter.  
Would it explode, or just cook his head from the inside out? A guessing game fit for idle Pandoran entertainment.  
John had always hated guessing games, though. He’d made a life and career out of getting answers, as quick as he could. Out of taking action and getting results, no matter the consequences. Like hell he was about to wait and see here.  
“..Godammit.” He tossed the compact case aside, lurching up from the bed unsteadily and lunging towards the workbench. “Fuck the code, move it!” John shoved the protesting mechromancer roughly out of the way, scrabbling around in the clutter of tools and other miscellany for something he desperately needed and desperately did not want all at once. “Fuck it!”  
The cruft and heat were overwhelming, overtaking his vision and his thoughts like a dust storm swallowing a truck. Somehow, though, his eyes managed to come to rest on the screwdriver, dry now, still sitting near the water pot from earlier.  
Gripping it like death itself, John steadied himself against the table with his other hand for a few moments. Sliding down several inches to prop himself more firmly, the free hand made its way up to his brow, feeling its way towards the left eye socket and taking stock of the layout. Then, after taking several slow and deep breaths, he rammed the screwdriver into his face.  
Schluck.  
In the midst of the sheer horror at what she was seeing, despite knowing exactly why he was so good at it and the terrible past things that entailed, Gaige had to admit that she was kind of impressed. Like, damn, son, John really knew how to scoop out an eyeball.  
The whole thing went by pretty fast. There was a low, anguished hissing as John bit his lip bloody, which quickly transformed into a stifled scream and raspy cry of pain as the metal orb was pried loose and yanked out, a small spatter of sparks and blood signifying success.  
John flung it across the room as he collapsed to the floor. He was vaguely aware of it bouncing a few times before it rolled away and he blacked out.  
For the second time that night, John woke up in a bleary haze, staring at the cracks and stains above his bed. Much less surprised this time around, he groaned quietly and lifted a kitten-weak hand to his face. Yep, as expected; fresh gauze over his left eye.  
He let his hand drop and closed his right eye briefly, gathering up strength in the cool darkness. Then he turned his head slowly to check out the aftermath.  
Gaige was sitting on his workbench stool, wiping her metal hand off with a rag and looking a bit paler than usual. At her feet was the screwdriver, crusted with blood now, and a few empty rejuv syringes. He could hear that Deathtrap robot still hovering in the other room, closer to the door now.  
“Oh hey, you’re up. Cool.” Gaige flashed a weak grin, then went back to not looking at him and wiping off her cyborg hand, finger by finger.  
“Hey,” he slurred. “Where’s...where’s the—‘  
She pointed wordlessly. John craned his neck with some effort and saw a smattering of sad little pieces of metal and wire sprinkled around the scorchmarks of a miniature explosion. Blood spatters combined with the dark soot to make a gloomy little tiedye effect. It was going to be a bitch to clean later.  
“Oh. Was it...sensory o—“  
“Sensory overload. Yeah.”  
“Ah.”  
A long pause.  
“That screwdriver still had junk on it, you know.”  
“Pretty sure...half-dissolved cocoa and marshmallows inside my skull cavity are the least of my worries, at this point.”  
The mechromancer bowed her head, soiled rag drooping into her lap. “Sorry.”  
John gestured vaguely into the air before shifting position and gingerly rubbing his forehead. Once upon a time, he’d have been a ball of murderous, shouting rage right about now. Hell, a few hours and one case of bad shock to his brain and body ago, even. But he was too damn tired for it now. And something else besides, that he had trouble identifying, or told himself he did.  
“Ehhhh. You still got further than I did, kiddo. Mine was a hunk’a junk, remember?”  
Gaige tilted her head, peering at him sideways. Boy, he must really be out of it. “Seriously? I bother you on your day off, knock you out and nearly blow your head off, and you’re not even angry now??” She narrowed her eyes, leaning towards him. “You still John in there? You didn’t get concussed or brain damaged, did you?”  
He waved her off again with a grunt, middle finger firmly at full mast. “You say that like you’re disappointed. Take what you can get, Gaige.”  
That brought a smile back to the girl’s face. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

***

Pandoran nights were long ones, so it was still dark when the shop door creaked open, casting a long rectangle of dull light on the sands of the Dust. Deathtrap led the way, floating off into the wintery night air and stopping at the furthest edge of the rectangle, looking back almost expectantly as he waited on his owner.  
Two figures stood near the doorway, their exaggerated shadows breaking up the bar of light into weird shapes and making for a charming silhouette in the doorway itself.  
“Big coat, hard beans, 3 gauge gears...you getting all this? Write it down.”  
“I’ll remember, I’ll remember, geeze!”  
“Right, sure. The big nomad coat though, that’s most important.” John huddled his thin frame together as nonchalantly as he could in the winter night, strong chin outlined with soft light, hair blowing in the wind in a way that was maybe almost dashing, kinda. Mostly he just looked cold as hell and really fucked up.  
“Yeah, sure I will. You know I will! I wanna see that figure you were talking about cutting, yeah?” Gaige smirked, then cleared her throat and rubbed her hands together, realizing how all that came off sounding. Tonight had been awkward enough.  
“And...thanks. Again,” John said. He shrugged and looked down as he stamped his feet to help circulation, looking away from the mechromancer’s incredulous expression. “It went all screwy and I was pissed off and your crap keeps exploding, but...it was cool. To be able to have that again, even if it was just for a few minutes.”  
“John...”  
“No, really.” This time he looked up and kept her gaze, didn’t turn away or sneer or complain or any of the usual John-ness. He looked earnest, that one bright blue eye locked on her and staying there, albeit uncertainly. “I...well, it was good. Really. I wouldn’t mind you trying again, maybe, sometime. Just test it on a few bandits first or something, would you?”  
Maybe she really would get that bridge built, someday. For all the stops and starts and retreats that had happened even just tonight alone, Gaige felt that maybe she’d somehow managed to build some stronger foundations to work with in future. One that could likely resist more than a few explosions.  
On impulse, she leaned forward and gave the taller man a quick squeeze of a hug. He froze, shocked, then gave her one or two awkward pats on the shoulder before she released him, both redfaced and embarrassed as could be. If only the others could see me now, she thought, fighting off the guilt.  
“Have a...uh, have a good...trip? Try not to get shot or anything. Uh.”  
“I’m a, uh, y’know. I’m a vault hunter! Yeah!” She stood up straight, hands on hips, looking like an inspirational poster. “Vault hunters can take care of themselves just fine, Uggo!”  
“Yeah, I noticed,” John replied, dryly. “But...still.”  
Blushing again, Gaige nodded and ran over to Deathtrap, who obediently lowered so she could clamber up onto a shoulder. Adjusting her winter clothes and rising up into the air, she waved back at the scarred man in front of the shop, hollering her goodbyes. “Stay warm, Johnny! Think warm thoughts and all that shit if nothin’ else! I’ll see you soon!”  
He waved back, watching her float off into the night. What could he say? What could he even do? Just wave, go back to his quiet little hole, and wait for her to come back. Bearing a coat, a few bits and bobs, maybe a work order. Maybe a smile, a smile just for him. He’d been annoyed at being barged in on earlier, it felt like a lifetime ago.  
John watched her fade into a little dot, and then she was gone. Damn, it was cold. Deserts had a special cold that was all their own, and after the events of the evening he was definitely feeling it. He stared at the empty darkness a little longer regardless, before finally heading back inside and bolting the door. He certainly had some things he could think about in the meantime.


End file.
